Dear Richard,
My post to the forum was not directed at you. Indeed I think I asked Mark to comment.
You indeed answered my post to you to the best of your ability. I was not making comment on that at all. I am sorry if you thought I was.
That you relayed from Peter the same response I had previously received from Heather was not being complained about.
I was in no way attacking the messenger.

I was and am still attacking the message though.

I have dealt with it contracts from both sides and ranging in cost from 3 to 7 figures.
I have never been given nor provided a response to a progress report that to give one will delay the project.
In both the educational and commercial worlds I was involved in, this was and is completely non acceptable.
If you do not know where you are and cannot state it how the hell will you ever know when you will get to the end.

Someone on the "team" knows the progress in terms of the stated goals. God, if they don't then giving this report is the least of our troubles.

A status update (in terms of stated goals) is all that is being asked for.

Honestly to me the why's and wherefore as to where we are along this path are irrelevant to this. I am not about to criticize or judge the why's or the other stuff that I am sure goes on. I am trusting they know what they are doing. I have, as many others, invested money to show that trust.

It really only needs a few lines, not the complete works of Shakespeare.

Btw, being told where the team is with this or that, although informative, doesn't actually help if the person you are telling has no idea where or what this or that has to do with the actual end point they were enquiring about. Without know whether this or that represent 10% or 90% I am none the wiser.

You've been given a progress report, apparently twice now. What you seem to want is also a fixed estimated schedule. As everyone involved has already explained, and as you know from your own work, arriving at meaningful estimates requires analysis, which is itself a scope of work. And given the nested scope as described for you, this is not quite as trivial as merely typing three arbitrary lines if those lines are to be at all useful.

As Steven McConnell reminds us, accuracy is quite different from specificity. A specific answer which is inaccurate is not useful.

You've been given accurate information. If you require more specific estimates, the engineers have already reported to you through two different channels that they will need to complete other tasks on which the FFI is dependent before they're in a position to estimate delivery schedules for the FFI itself.

That said, out of respect for both your time and my own I have to acknowledge that I've not really offered anything new here. We are going in circles. I have nothing else to offer here. If you want information from the company you may want to write the company directly.

Richard Gaskin
Community volunteer LiveCode Community LiaisonLiveCode development, training, and consulting services: Fourth World Systems:http://FourthWorld.comLiveCode User Group on Facebook :http://FaceBook.com/groups/LiveCodeUsers/